


How Way Leads Onto Way

by shipthehats



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Bill cipher allusion, Dipper loves Spiderman apparently, Dorks in Love, M/M, Older Dipper Pines, Post-Weirdmageddon, Wirt is covertly quoting Robert Frost, alternate otgw ending, beast mentioned, cute shit, greg mentioned, how did I even, its super gay, lots of birch trees, older wirt, pinescone, scary imagery, soft tree gore, wirt is depressed but gets better :D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6995230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipthehats/pseuds/shipthehats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wirt took on the task of lantern bearer. He wanders eternally through The Unknown, protecting those who venture too far into the wood. One day, a particularly stubborn boy crosses paths with Wirt. Wirt is caught between scaring him off and potentially scarring him for life, or leading the boy deeper into The Unknown. That way he might not be so lonely in his cruel damnation. After all... what's a cuter companion than a dorky brown haired boy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Way Leads Onto Way

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt given to Shipthehats!! My dear Anon asked: "I can ask for a Pinescone? Where Wirt is a demon (incubus, boogeyman or shadow people), where he tries to be intimidating (?) but he just can't XD. The plot is free ^w^."  
> And this probably came out a lot more serious than it was supposed to...heh... BUT!! just stay with me, it gets cute like Anon wanted. Hope you enjoy :)

Time behaves differently here. Not that I took much notice of time before. Before...whatever this is now. Here, time wades through muck. Often, each step on leaves trodden black takes an eternity. A tremendous amount of effort. Other days, I'm not sure if I had moved during the instant it takes for the sun to cut across the gray-brown sky. Like suddenly floating on water, everything stills. The muck is gone but soon the water freezes over. And not knowing which is worse—the days hurtling fast or the agonizing hours—that in itself is a cruel kind of damnation.  
            I tell this with a sigh, no longer with shock or sorrow. Because I was the one to put myself here; I was the one who made the choice to take his place. It doesn't do well to think back and regret, to rearrange the words that were said to make them kind. What's done is done. I carry the Dark Lantern and stumble through this yellow wood.  
  
  
Greg didn't deserve that. _Doesn't_ deserve this. I gave up and he took it upon himself to pick up my slack. He thought he was doing good. _Is_ so good--better than I could ever be. I think that's the reason why the lantern now glows so bright. It's the fire of his soul burning white and pure.  
            This is Greg now. Not the other one. Not that pale boy with the slit for a mouth, pulled into a sorry frown, as clawing branches cradled him. That wasn't him the bush pulled into the soft earth. No, my brother is here with me.  
            And it wasn't me who I saw reflected in the icy river. Now that one...that one had sunken cheeks and a haunted visage. From his dusty hair grew a pair of antlers. Branches. Winding and seemingly grasping for something just out of reach. That wasn't me. I'm glad Greg doesn't have to see this monster like I do. I hate him. He's not me.  
  
  
The lighthouse and its keeper. Yes, that seems to be us. We warn others of the rocky shore and ensure no one crashes against its crags. Thinking of us in this way—it seems perhaps the better claim. A merry delusion.  
            Only a handful of times had I actually felt useful as Keeper: a replacement for the Beast. I don't recall if it was the first, but the earliest I remember was of two little kids. Too young to really tell them apart in gender or age, they were playing close to the edge of the wood on the fringe of nightfall. I watched cautiously as they laughed and screeched at each other. If they came closer, all that joy and innocence would be gone, stolen by The Unknown. I think I shook a nearby bush or snapped a few branches, I'm not sure, but I remember clearly their faces. Scared. The laughter gone from their eyes. They must've seen me against the black legion of trees. They ran back the way they came, assumingly to their families. Families I pray they have for a long time to come. God knows mine's forever gone.  
  
  
I think it was where summer and fall met that it happened. I was determined to drive him away like all the others who venture too far for their own good. Perhaps it was for _my_ own good that he didn't turn away.  
            It's usually kids, though, and this person...I couldn't guess his age. Taller than what I was used to, but still a little shorter than me. Difficult to tell from my hiding place. His face looked soft and rounded. It didn't match his leanly muscular body. Maybe he was a runner. He couldn't be older than 20 and couldn't have been younger than what I used to be. Though the way he held his face, gently smiling and eager, made him look almost juvenile. The sleeves on his flannel shirt were scrunched up to his elbows, his blocky hands holding what looked like a scrappy book. Between his fingers I could make out a glittering 4 in what appeared to be gold leaf. If those loose pages blew away with the wind, would I snatch them out of the air and return them? I imagined him thanking me as I walked into the light for the first time in what would feel like centuries. The sun warming my new skin as I slough off the old, now sallowed.  
            Lost in my daydream, I hadn't noticed him walking towards my place among the trees. He did it without a hesitant step through the undergrowth. This one was either brave or stupid. I backed away, my feet falling without a sound, lest he saw my horridness. But wouldn't that be the thing to drive this head-strong man away? As he paused to flick through his book just within the borders of the wood, I found my voice to call out to him from the shadows.  
            "Leave. Don't come back."  
            His brunet head bent over his book as he flipped through it more quickly. "Hah, so you're saying I should make like a tree and leaf?" He looked up at me and smiled as he joked. I couldn't imagine why one would smile as they gaze into a forest to meet glowing orbs peering out of the darkness. Admittedly, I was confused by his words. No one had spoken to me in ages, much less made a joke. He must have somehow seen my surprise for he chuckled and moved toward me. "Would you mind telling me--"  
            "No farther!" I held the lantern out in front of my body and he stopped a good few yards away. "Trust me when I say you must turn back!" I took a few strides toward the boy and into the light that filtered through the leaves. Leaning close to his face, speaking quietly and urgently, I warned him, "No one who ventures into this forest ever comes back out. Do you understand me?"  
            He didn't even bristle. He laughed, boyish and bubbly. The words "child prince" stuck in my mind. "Wow, This—this is amazing! You weren't in any of the journals! Would you mind telling me what you call yourself? And maybe I can ask you a few questions like height, weight, distinguishing traits, that sort of thing?" While he was speaking he pulled a pen from behind his ear, half concealed by his thick hair, and proceeded to repeatedly click it with his thumb. His eyes were bright and unafraid to meet mine. It was invasive. Trespassing on some sort of spiritual level, but...it also seemed like he wanted to really know who I was.  
            In his eyes I could see a future. Fulfillment, hope, passion. All the things The Unknown had taken away from me. He seemed to me unsullied. Pure in heart and intention. I ached knowing someday that spark in him I so admired would be gone, tarnished by a cruel and unforgiving world. Oh, how I wanted to be the hand he reached for when that day did come. I couldn't explain what possessed me to feel so intensely for this stranger, but I knew I couldn't let anything happen to him. No one should have to suffer like I had. But be one lonely traveler, I stood and considered the more sinister option: don't scare him off, let him explore the forest, let him fall into some trouble. Soon he wouldn't be able to return to his undoubtedly happy life. "Stay with me," I would say to him then. "We can live out eternity together."  
            No. I'd be no better than the Beast, a disappointment to Greg. This kid wanted to know _what_ I was. He didn't actually care about the creature before him. Leading him deeper into the woods would just guarantee me endless regret. But letting him go...  
            I leaned away and looked down at the boy, shaking my head at him with a kind of pained pity. "I'm sorry," I told him. "That was more of a command than a suggestion." He showed no intent of leaving.  
            I needed to do more than intimidate him. I needed to _scar him_. Straightening to my full height, I apologized again. "I'm sorry." I loosened the reigns on the monster.  
            I could feel the coarse texture of bark forming scales along my cheeks. My chest expanded with the creaking moans of dead trees as I felt the cartilage tear from my sternum. It wasn't as painful as one might think; not when I couldn't feel much to begin with. Thorny brambles climbed my legs, rooting me to the earth. The sound of branches snapping echoed off the trees and bounced backed to us from every direction. An unnerving noise.  
            Like menacing talons, the bones-turned-branches stretched outward and popped the buttons of my shirt. They kept going, kept turning my insides out, as they unfolded like butterfly wings. Just a strip of bark, my transformed sternum, shielded a fraction of my beating viscera. An open cavity, I was exposed. I bled the black oil of Edelwood trees. It clung to the clawing branches that grew out of me and stained the leaves beneath my feet.  
            He stared at me with wide eyes, a fawn caught in headlights. "Do you see what I am now?" I shouted to his still image, "Do you see what this place has done to me!? This is what I'm trying to protect you from!" Without realizing I had done it, I found my hands outstretched and gripping the poor boy's shoulders. "Just don't—... I don't want to see you get hurt."  
            He gave me a half-smile. The kind you show to young children as they tell you their irrational fears. "Do you know what I see...? I see someone who is desperately trying to do the right thing." I followed his gaze down to my open chest. "You have a good heart," he smiled.  
            I smiled too.  
            "And I'll tell you something else, Mister," he said as he clapped a hand on my shoulder. "I've fought demons more terrifying than you and won. You don't scare me." He smirked and rose onto the tips of his toes to whisper in my ear, "You're actually one of the cuter creatures I've met." The boy kissed me then, right on my bark-freckled cheek.  
  
  
He goes by Dipper. He hasn't told me his real name in the occasions after our initial meeting, but to be fair, I haven't told him mine. Dipper calls me Tree Boy. I like the sound of it better than the Keeper. But that could be simply because Tree Boy is what Dipper calls me.  
            We came to an agreement in the woods that we have upheld in these ages hence. Our first meeting feels like such a long time ago. I submitted to an extensive interrogation process, complete with portrait sketching, on the condition that Dipper does not explore the mysteries of The Unknown. To assure myself that he is staying out of trouble, I've taken to watching him from afar whenever he decides to go on one of his many "mystery hunts." Although, I think he's catching onto me.  
            "Tree Boy, do you think I can't tell? I've got about six years of documenting supernatural phenomena under my belt; I know when you're around," he told an empty glade one summer day. "Your stalking is getting sloppy. I can see your branches!" I dashed from where I stood and pressed my back against the trunk of a wide tree. Stifling my laughter with one hand, I pulled my cloak tightly around me with the other. The thrill of getting caught, like a game of hide and seek, Dipper made me feel like a carefree child. Judging by his uncurbed laughter, I'd like to think I had the same effect on him.  
  
  
Dipper likes to stick his hands in knotholes. He's told me he's looking for secret levers or switches. He often comes up short. I couldn't stand to see him disappointed, so I gave him something to find.  
            It's silly, really. On carefully collected maple leaves, I'd write out short poems for him and leave them in places he'd check for secret buttons. The first few were limericks and couplet jokes. These he would laugh at and on the underside write things like, "Nice one," or "Keep 'em coming!" So I did.  
            The poems got longer and more personalized. Instead of writing his responses on the reverse and placing the leaves back where they were, Dipper started to keep them in his journal. He smiled as he wrote on the paper next to them. A big, goofy smile I hadn't seen from him before. He bit his bottom lip as if he thought he shouldn't be smiling that way.  
            I found myself making the same face whenever I thought about Dipper, and each time I was surprised. My feelings for him needed to be acknowledged. Not just to myself, but to Dipper as well, on the small chance they might be returned.  
  
  
            I didn't wait around to watch him read it. I didn't go back that evening to check if it was gone. I didn't get a note back where I left my heart and soul, I instead happened upon it. Tied with a red string, a rolled up piece of printer paper stuck out of the knothole of a birch. I untied the knot and let the paper uncurl between my fingers. "Look Up," was all it said.  
            Puzzled, I looked up into the splitting branches of the tree. Was I supposed to see something? The way the twigs came together to form boughs, boughs coming together to form the trunk, was I supposed to make something of that? An unnatural sound started me, a metallic unwinding. Descending from high in the branches was a human figure. Upside down with knees bent like a spider's. Dipper's face came level with my chest and he grinned up at me. Now that I could see him properly, he held a grappling hook in his hands, the rope acting as the web. There was something awfully familiar about the gesture.  
            "Well?" he said. "You know what I'm getting at, right?"  
            "I think I might."  
            It was awkward. I couldn't lead into it by brushing his brown hair out of his eyes or holding his chin in my hands. He grinned at me and chuckled.  
            "I can't hold this pose forever, Tree Boy."  
            "Then don't," I smirked.  
            Before Dipper could question it, I swung him into my arms, holding him like the child prince he is.  Obviously startled, he dropped the grappling hook and reflexively threw his arms around my neck.  
            "Is this more comfortable?"  
            "Yes, yes it is," he hurriedly said before crashing his lips into mine.  
            Dipper was so soft. All of him. I held him tighter because I was afraid if I closed my eyes for too long he would vanish. Dipper pulled himself closer to me in response, both of us laughing between chaste kisses.  
  
  
We sat against the white birch in the lazy afternoon sun. His head lay on my shoulder while I looked up at the tree's meandering branches. Sitting there with seemingly all the time in the world, I did make something of the tree's perfectly unpredictable structure.  
            There were endpoints in a million different places. Though they all come from the same trunk, the same base. Each divergence in the branches lead to other divergences and still more.  
            I thought of decisions and how each way leads onto way. Pathways spreading out and intersecting like the magnificent tree above me. I thought of my own decisions. How one thing lead to the next and then this beautiful boy was sleeping on my shoulder. His eyelashes were flitting in a dream.  
            We know it will be tough to make this work, but isn't that always the case? Although no effort is too great for me if it means staying by Dipper's side, we shouldn't have to worry about that now. What matters is this moment here.  
            We took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.


End file.
